


The Napa House

by lodessa



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-04
Updated: 2007-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lilly was never in this place, Duncan made it a point not to stay longer than absolutely necessary, and sometimes it’s almost too easy to believe they never existed at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Napa House

The Napa house has the feel of a place not lived in. After having it built for their 10th wedding anniversary, Jake and Celeste rarely visited before scandal in Neptune led them to flee there. Truth be told, they don’t exactly spend a lot of time there now. Celeste is constantly at women’s luncheons in Marin, or weekend retreats down the coast. Jake spends so much time in the city, doing business lunches and three day meetings; he has actually rented an apartment there to cut down on the driving. 

It’s Friday, on Memorial Day weekend, and everyone seems to want to actually spend time with their families for once. So Jake drives up to the place he’s supposed to call home these days. It’s really a lovely place; the architect and landscaping artist they hired were top of the line after all. May in California is glorious, warm but not boiling, and the hills are still green from the rain, not having dried out yet. Celeste’s car isn’t there when he arrives, and he has to go upstairs and check the online calendar to learn that she’s in Monterey this weekend. 

They have a woman who comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays to clean, and a gardener who shows up on Sundays mornings, but it seemed silly to staff a house that no one ever comes home to. So Jake is alone, and it’s not exactly an unpleasant feeling after twenty three days of high powered meetings and contract negotiation. In this place it’s easy to forget that he used to coach his son’s soccer team on the weekends, or the sound the kids’ voices used to make as their disagreements echoed down the stairwell. Lilly was never in this place, Duncan made it a point not to stay longer than absolutely necessary, and sometimes it’s almost too easy to believe they never existed at all. 

Sometimes Jake believes that is why Celeste wanted to come here and, more importantly, why she wanted to sell the Neptune house and never go back. Sometimes Jake thinks that’s the very thing that drove Duncan away as well, not that it was Celeste’s intent to run off her beloved son. She doesn’t miss Lilly the same way they do… did, though. Any remembrance of the prodigal daughter fills his wife with rage and not longing. So it’s not surprising that she didn’t realize that a house so entirely absent of Lilly, not even a family picture with her in it, was the last thing Duncan wanted or needed. The place starts to make Jake feel that he himself in insane, if he stays here for any extended length of time. It begins to seem more plausible that he invented the existence of his children, than that they used to be and now are so utterly gone.

It’s times like these when he finds himself arguing, with Clarence, the logistics involved in a visit with his son. Clarence always ultimately convinces him that such direct contact would be as good as turning Duncan in to the authorities, and Jake has to content himself with the knowledge that Duncan is free, not only from the law but from everything else that ties people down, including Jake. That seems like something Lilly would have wanted, and Jake kind of hopes that Duncan takes solace in following footsteps his sister might have made if she’d been alive to do so. The dreams Jake once had for him, are completely and utterly shot to hell, so hopefully his son has found some others.

The TV buzzes with coverage of the Aaron Echolls trial. No one invited Jake and Celeste to participate. It is like they are as dead as Lilly. Jake supposes that their rage would not help the defense and that the prosecution fears their own mistaken belief that Duncan was the killer would lend credence to Aaron’s pack of lies. It still feels wrong to be all these hundreds of miles away from it all though, when it happen in their home, in their family. What is “they”, though? Celeste and Jake see almost everyone else more than they see each other. Jake thinks about flying down to Neptune, but he has business to attend to, and more importantly the media to avoid, so he can’t and he knows it. 

Veronica Mars in on the stand, and sometimes she looks so much like Lianne it hurts. Jake still wonders if maybe Lilly was his punishment for listening to his father and not his heart. It wasn’t that Jake hadn’t loved Celeste; she was stunning and clever, and very good with all those social sort of things that used to make Jake nervous but where terribly necessary for entrepreneurship. But, Jake can never forget the look on Lianne’s face the night he told her he was going to marry Celeste. Sweet, simple, Lianne, she was his first love and you never really get over that. His father had been right though. Lianne would have sunk their family into scandal, plunged them in to debt, long before Jake had a chance to make a name for himself. Funny how some things you can postpone, but never avoid.

He turns off the television and grabs his keys off the counter. There’s a pretty tasty taco shop not too far down the road, the kind of place that makes Celeste’s skin crawl. The sight of poverty and “commonness” bothers her; Jake suspects it’s primarily because it reminds her of when she used to be part of that other world. He orders his food to go and eats in his car on the way back to the house.

The house is still quiet, and Jake wonders about maybe getting a dog, but they aren’t there enough and he remembers what happened to the last dog… maybe a cat. Duncan was allergic to cats. Or was it Lilly? Sometimes Jake starts to doubt his own memory of the children. Celeste will say it was Lilly; their perfect son could never have had something as vulgar as allergies. Jake remembers picking Duncan up early from the Casablancas, though; his eyes all swollen up and the beginning of a rash on his forearms. Yes, Duncan was allergic or Jake really is going completely nuts in this house without ghosts.

Sometimes he thinks it would be easier. It would be easier to believe that the last twenty years were a lie. It would be easier to find Lianne and make things right with her. It would be easier to buy into the illusion of his perfect success and marriage. After all, it’s not Celeste’s fault. He can’t go back on a twenty year old decision though, and he can’t let himself be weak enough to slip into forgetfulness. The world seems satisfied with his performance. His employees and investors, no one faults him for the choices he’s made. Jake can’t shake the feeling that there is something very wrong with being here in the Napa house, that he’s lost touch with what’s important. This place was not meant to be lived in. It was a symbol, a sign of good will between Jake and Celeste for the whole world to see. Jake picks back up his briefcase, and locks the house back up. His modest city apartment is less oppressive than the emptiness of this picture of idealistic domesticity.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The Emperor Challenge at Fandom Arcana.


End file.
